


In Every Universe

by featherbow12



Series: Boys in Love [3]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Boys In Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:15:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25533460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/featherbow12/pseuds/featherbow12
Summary: It’s different in every universe, but somehow, they always find each other.
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin)
Series: Boys in Love [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1850518
Comments: 16
Kudos: 143





	In Every Universe

It’s different in every universe, but somehow, they always find each other.

**

The simplest ones are like any other love story. They meet—sometimes at a coffee shop, Merlin serving Arthur creamy, more-sugar-than-caffeine drinks with a fond shake of his head, or Arthur keeping Merlin’s standard black decaf ready each morning, wrinkling his nose at the bitter smell. But more often than not, they’re loyal to tea, so it happens elsewhere, jostled together on the tram or partnered for a Uni assignment or just a chance meeting under a streetlight on the way home.

They court, and usually it’s Arthur going after Merlin—a bouquet of roses, a trip to his book signing, initiating one-too-many casual touches for them to be casual at all—but sometimes it’s Merlin being brave (when Arthur’s still in the closet, or just too shy to approach Merlin my-cheekbones-can-cut-diamonds Emrys), batting long lashes and sending him sheepish, endearing smiles that Arthur tucks away into his heart. It’s best when they do the dance together, though—a push and pull, a drawn breath slowly waiting for the inevitable exhale of falling together.

And they do. Sometimes it’s an electric spark, clothes and thoughts and any kind of caution ripped away for a night of carnal bliss, bodies pressed together tight enough to meld, but more often, it starts with open-mouthed kisses and hand-holding and sweet promises at the end of the evening, each little moment building until it all explodes like a supernova.

In one memorable universe, they’re nearly 70 before anything non-PG happens at all.

But with enough possibilities, and here there truly are infinite, it’s not always quite so simple.

Because as much as they’re destined for each other, they’re not always meant to be together. Sometimes Merlin ends up comatose at seventeen from a car accident, or Arthur marries a proper girl from Camelot’s upper crust because it’ll make his father happy, and they float through life half-spirited, settling but never quite content.

Those are rare, though. Even the multiverse can’t change enough variables to keep them apart too many times.

It’s far more common that it goes like this—Arthur’s in the army. He’s broad and muscled and sporting a haircut just short enough to comply with regulation, dotted with scars but all the more vibrant for the death he has seen (he gets to live when they don’t, and that’s a gift he won’t waste). Merlin, two years younger and still as green as grass after rainfall, is the scrawny combat medic assigned to his unit. He knows his veins from his arteries and his knives from his bullets, but Arthur wonders if he remembers how to smile.

The boy (because in his eyes, Merlin’s still a kid) is sharp-tongued and quick-fingered and has ears like a bat, but he scratches out poems in the dirt and hides trembling fingers the first time he makes a kill shot and runs his hands over his head like he’s used to feeling hair there.

He’s not the same soldier as the rest of them.

They start off tenuous, quick-and-dirty in the barracks when everyone else is out patrolling, but Arthur feels the ghost of calloused ebony skin beneath his fingertips for days. The image of those electric blue eyes, soft and vulnerable with pupils blown wide, imprints itself in his mind, and the next time it’s neither quick nor dirty—it’s a languid, sensual dance by the light of the stars, and Arthur decides this is what it means to _make love_.

After that, it’s as easy as breathing to go from stolen kisses and heated glances and fumbled touches to the kind of bedrock partnership that involves Merlin patching Arthur up after a nasty skirmish and Arthur diving in front of a bullet aimed at Merlin (it only lodges in the Kevlar protecting his heart, but Arthur sees Merlin cry for the first time that night, wrapped up in his arms).

He learns what Merlin’s smile looks like, on the rare occasions they can draw one out of him—large and crooked, imbued with a hint of boyish charm that melts years off his face. He learns how Merlin comes undone—a phone call to his mum or a deep, bone-crushing hug that he _always_ buries himself into like he’s starved for touch (aren’t they all?) or Arthur getting hurt in any way. They’re in the wrong business for that last one, but they make do.

Merlin shows him the fastest way to tie a cravat (the medical kind) in order to splint someone, and he teaches Merlin how to write letters home that leave his mum reassured instead of gutted. Somewhere between trying to guess how many languages Merlin can speak (just two in some universes, all the way to a whopping eight in others) and mercilessly ribbing him about his ears, Arthur forgets what a life without Merlin Emrys to guard his six was even like.

Nobody asks about them, at least not directly—Merlin only ever speaks to Lance and Gwaine anyways, though Arthur’s starting to think that’s more self-preservation than aloofness, and few are dumb enough to question Arthur’s personal life. It’s easy enough to ignore the few rumors there are.

It’s all easy until it’s not.

Sometimes one dies in the other’s arms—Arthur bleeding from more places than Merlin has enough hands to plug, Merlin stabbed in the back (figuratively and literally) by a villager he tended to.

Sometimes Arthur gets hurt, close enough to a detonating IED that he loses a leg, and is sent back home for rehab. He calls Merlin the same time every Wednesday, tears held fast in his eyes but refusing to fall, and only ever sleeps on Friday nights when the hospital staff brings out the good drugs.

No one ever said it was easy to be in love.

Or it goes like this—Merlin’s a painter. An artist, really, and he prefers drawing rough pencil sketches over painting, but the latter’s what pays the rent. He paints whatever the commissions request, from vibrant city skylines to hot pink tiger stripes, but when it’s just him and his thoughts and a brush, he paints Arthur.

No matter what shade of blue he mixes, they never quite do justice to the perpetual _light_ in his best friend’s eyes, but he tries—adds the crinkles, the flecks of silver that aren’t visible until up close, the neat-and-trim lashes.

He kisses Arthur for the first time in his kitchen on a Friday evening, red-orange sun bathing their faces something cartoonish, and saves a mental picture of Arthur’s wide eyes and blush-tinted cheeks and mussed-up hair to draw later.

Arthur proposes to him one year later on another Friday evening in Merlin’s kitchen. He butchers beautiful lines that he’s clearly tried to memorize, but that only makes Merlin’s heart swell with affection for this overgrown puppy who’s become his home.

Or it’s like this—Arthur’s an international footie sensation, and Merlin is the orthopedic surgeon who repairs his knee.

A horrific challenge leads to Arthur getting stretchered off the field, head held in his hands to hide an agonized grimace, and two days later he’s sitting on a table squirming beneath the shrewd gaze of Dr. Emrys. When Arthur finds out the required surgery will, at best, sideline him for the rest of the season, it’s Merlin who sees the plea written across his face and shoos all the other doctors out of the room so Arthur can break in private.

That’s where it starts.

Six months later, Merlin hangs a photo of their joined hands on the wall of his office, and sits in the stands wearing Arthur’s jersey and a roguish grin for as many games as he can take time off to attend. They’re not public about it, but they’re not exactly private, either, and Merlin cheers the absolute loudest of anyone in the stadium the day Arthur walks out onto the pitch in the iconic red-and-gold kit for the first time post-injury.

When Arthur scores the opening goal of the game, he immediately points at Merlin in the stands before thumping his fist against his chest, right over his heart.

Merlin can only smile and rest a hand against his heart in return, too overcome for much else. He fell in love with Arthur when he was still pale and weak in a hospital bed, barely holding it together and terrified for his future. To see him now, sprinting, grinning, _glowing_ with spirit—it’s something else entirely, something Merlin can hardly believe is his to keep. But keep he does.

In another universe, they’re the unlikely power couple of the decade—Arthur’s the Prime Minister’s son, groomed to follow his father into politics, and Merlin is an activist who hates Uther’s guts. They meet through a random seating arrangement at some honors event where Arthur is representing the Pendragon family and Merlin receives an award, and it’s fiery from the very first minute.

Two stubborn, bone-headed men from completely opposite walks of life shouldn’t get on but they do, something tying a posh MP-to-be and a social justice activist into two sides of the same coin.

Merlin challenges every belief Arthur’s ever held to be true, and Arthur drags him along to _the_ _best tailor this side of the English Channel_ for a custom suit, because Merlin hasn’t yet learned that people in power have to take _him_ seriously before they’ll listen to his _ideas_.

When Merlin ultimately delivers a rousing speech that makes it all the way to the BBC, Arthur strides right up to the podium steps and kisses him, everyone and everything that said he couldn’t have this be damned.

They work, even when they shouldn’t.

If Arthur has scars, Merlin kisses them away. If Merlin’s quiet, Arthur brings him out. Whatever the situation, they’re somehow always balanced together—two halves of the same whole.

Sometimes they meet as kids. Arthur moves to Ealdor or Merlin to Camelot or both of them to some other location, and they grow up next to each other (always the bestest of friends), discovering the world side-by-side.

Other times, the world has screwed them both too many times to count by the time they meet—in prison, for instance, Merlin serving a sentence for art forgery (because selling knock-off art was better than selling himself) and Arthur for aggravated assault against a man who hurt his sister.

That starts as a relationship of mutual usefulness—Arthur keeps bad-intentioned inmates away from Merlin and Merlin smuggles him trinkets from the outside (smokes, cards, booze). It never quite goes anywhere (a great way to put a target on your back is to out yourself), but sometime between Merlin singing when Arthur misses home so much it physically _burns_ and Arthur teaching him proper shaving techniques Merlin’s own father was never around to demonstrate, they become so codependent that Merlin acts out for a week just so he won’t be paroled before Arthur’s release.

Arthur talks back to the warden about a month before they’re set to get out—the guy’s a creep, and there are only so many _un_ subtle lecherous glances in Merlin’s direction that he can ignore before something snaps—and he’s thrown in solitary for three days as a result.

It’s the worst 72 hours of his life, worse than the excruciating tummy bug in high school, worse than when Gwen left him right as he was ready to propose, worse than seeing his sister in the hospital with her blood staining the sheets. He nearly claws his eyes out from the _blankness_ of it all, nothing but white walls and white tile floors and white noise keeping him company.

He almost cries when he’s brought back, never having expected that he would miss Crooked G’s jibes (“Back from the white room, Pendragon? Feel like a new man?”), but the sound of that sharp Irish accent pulls a smile from his lips. After the absolute silence of solitary, gen pop feels almost comforting with its raucous laughter and taunts and the overall mayhem that comes with hundreds of men cooped up together for an extended period of time.

(And possibly—no _definitely_ —because of a certain set of blue eyes and tousled raven hair that feel more like home now than Camelot ever did)

He doesn’t expect it when Merlin pulls him into a crushing hug as soon as he’s back in their cell, but it’s hard to deny the way his whole body melts into the touch like he needs it for survival. He might even let out a whimper.

They sleep like that for the next four nights, Merlin’s limbs sprawled around Arthur, Arthur’s chin in the hollow of Merlin’s neck, both of them enveloped in the citrus scent of the body wash Merlin smuggled in a few weeks ago, and eventually Arthur stops trembling at the sound of silence.

But sometimes, in other universes, they cuddle just because they can—an elbow shoved into a stomach, ankles locked together, fingers curled around the rise of a hip. They cuddle because it’s too cold or the bed is on the smaller side or just because they’re MerlinandArthur and that’s what they do.

And exactly one time, it goes like this—Arthur is a prince and Merlin is his servant.

**

Little things change in every universe. But there’s always an Arthur and a Merlin, two souls in love, and most of the time it’s really just that simple.


End file.
